Carole King’s Tapestry Celebrates 55th AnniversaryLou Adler and Harvey Kubernik 2008 Interview

Carole King’s extraordinary career has defined American popular music for more than half a century. Born in New York City in 1942, she shaped the soundtrack of the 1960s with “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and other classics written with her first husband Gerry Goffin. King was a leading figure in the singer-songwriter movement of the 1970s, with dozens of hits and music awards. Her 1971 album Tapestry won four Grammys and remains beloved across generations in America and around the globe.

Yet King struggled to reconcile fame with her roles as wife and mother and retreated to the backwoods of Idaho, only to emerge in recent years as a political activist and the subject of the Tony-winning Broadway show Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Carole King: She Made the Earth Move was published September 16, 2025 by Yale University Press.

Drawing on numerous interviews as well as historical and contemporary sources, this book brings to life King’s professional accomplishments, her personal challenges, and her lasting contributions to the great American songbook. Journalist and author Jane Eisner places King’s life in context, revealing details of her humble beginnings in postwar Jewish Brooklyn and exploring the roots of her musical genius.

“A robust celebration of a legendary musician.”—Publishers Weekly “A thorough knowledge of King’s musical output inform[s] Eisner’s sensitive investigation.” —Kirkus Reviews “A thoughtful, nuanced, and intelligent take on a reluctant pop star.”—Booklist.

Readers will come to understand the ways King’s four marriages intersected with her artistic production, her fruitful collaborations across genres, her conflicted relationship with fame, and her engagement with politics. Music is at the heart of this biography, and Eisner shows us that the key to understanding King’s music is to appreciate the centrality of the piano in her songwriting and performance. Throughout, Eisner describes how King created melodies and innovative chord structures that continue to resonate today.

All who have been moved by King’s work will relish this deep insight into her unique creativity. Carole King’s songs have become worldwide anthems to friendship, longing, and love.

Jane Eisner is a journalist, educator, and nonprofit leader. From 2008 to 2019 she was editor-in-chief of The Forward. Under her leadership, The Forward became the most influential Jewish news outlet in the country and won numerous regional and national awards. From 2019 to 2023, she was director of academic affairs and an adjunct professor at Columbia School of Journalism.

From 1980 to 2005, she worked at The Philadelphia Inquirer as a reporter, foreign correspondent, editorial page editor, and national columnist. She was vice president of the National Constitution Center from 2006 to 2008. She is known for her interviews with President Barack Obama, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, among others.

Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Wesleyan University, Columbia Journalism School, and was the first Katharine Houghton Hepburn Fellow at Bryn Mawr College. She is the author of Taking Back the Vote: Getting American Youth Involved in Our Democracy.

King was inducted into the Rock and roll Hall of Fame in 2021. At the time Carole wrote: “I wanted to be a songwriter so I could meet all the great artists and they would know who I was. I thought being inducted into the Rock Hall as a songwriter with Gerry Goffin was the pinnacle. Until now. Thank you for ALSO inducting me as an artist. And to my fans always.”

The apt choice to induct the 79-year-old King at the Oct. 30 Rock Hall ceremony was Taylor Swift. In her speech, Swift, born 18 years after Tapestry was released, called King “the greatest songwriter of all time.”

The 1971 landmark Tapestry album from singer/songwriter and pianist Carole King, produced by Ode Records label owner Lou Adler, with engineer Hank Cicalo at the board in California at A&M Studios in Hollywood, spent 15 weeks at #1, garnered four Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Performance (Female) Record of the Year, “It’s Too Late;” and Song of the Year “You’ve Got a Friend.” 

Producer Quincy Jones was a 1972 Grammy recepient for an arrangement on his own L.P. of King’s “Smackwater Jack.” The album resided fulltime on the music record charts for six years, generating over 24 million in sales worldwide, making it one of the most successful discs of all-time. 

The first-pressing of Tapestry, as an LP, arrived in March 1971 with little fanfare and modest expectations.  55 years later it holds an exhalted place in the pantheon of pop music; a triumph of master craftsmanship married to a feminine sensibility that transformed both its audience and the marketplace. 

King’s Tapestry was re-relased with a second CD of live performances in retail outlets on April 22nd 2008 on the Epic/Ode/Legacy record label, a division of Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

In 2008, Lou Adler invited me to write the 5,000-word liner notes to this Tapestry Deluxe Edition CD released by Sony Legacy Recordings.

During 2009, I also penned a liner note essay for Sony Legacy’s THE ESSENTIAL CAROLE KING. Author and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Andrew Loog Oldham (founding manager and producer of the Rolling Stones) also wrote an essay for the compilation, produced by Lou Adler, Steve Berkowitz, and Rob Santos.  

The 2008 Tapestry model finally offers a chance to experience Carole King in "unplugged" recital. The second CD in the deluxe package finally realizes Adler's decades-long dream concept, as it marries a newly remastered version of the classic 12-song album with a second CD containing previously unreleased live piano-voice concert versions of songs from the album (in the same order) recorded in 1973 (Boston; Columbia, Maryland; and New York's Central Park), and 1976 (San Francisco Opera House).  Tapestry Live underscores, as Adler knew before anybody when he signed King to Ode, that Carole King had an instinctive grasp of the job she was born to do. 

With Tapestry Live, King has reimagined her monumental 1971 iconic effort and employs a new and different set of vocal and piano musical muscles to her now proven soul-bearing copyrights inhabiting the concert stage.  The unwinding drama built around King’s grand Steinway refurbished visions are displayed in a live setting.

In the April 29, 1971 issue of Rolling Stone, Jon Landau opined, “Carole King’s second album, Tapestry, has fulfilled the promise of her first and confirmed that she is one of the most creative figures in all of pop music. It is an album of surpassing personal intimacy and musical accomplishment and a work infused with a sense of artistic purpose. It is also easy to listen to and easy to enjoy. The simplicity of the singing, composition, and ultimate feeling achieved the kind of eloquence and beauty that I had forgotten rock is capable of. Conviction and commitment are the life blood of Tapestry and are precisely what make it so fine.”

By late 1970, the rock music scene was going through a huge sea change. The glory days of worshiping bands such as Love, Buffalo Springfield, The Doors was fading into a narcotic distance. The deaths of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin (and Jim Morrison just around the corner), the ongoing horror of Vietnam, and the break up of The Beatles all contributed to a subtle but overt change that made the audience desire a different relationship with the music. And that was an intimate, one on one rapport with the message, and that message was delivered by the artist and the singer-songwriter.

Carole King was one this new genre’s throughbreds; a veteran of the late-50’s and early ‘60s immortal Brill Building scene, and artist with an immaculate pedigree. After writing hits for The Byrds, Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin and others, by 1968 she had become Canyon-ized, a fixture in this new music community...

Released in late-March 1971, Tapestry struck a universal chord at an opportune time in pop and rock music history - the intersection of folk-rock's introspective and a socially conscious sense of disturbing forensic romanticism in a planet-gone- wild. With the escalating rise of West Coast naturalism centered in the saturated Los Angeles music sector known as Laurel Canyon.

Just prior to Tapestry coming out was the deregulation of the FM bandwidth, which resulted in a mini-explosion of so-called new 'progressive' or 'underground' or 'free-form' radio stations eager to spotlight their own artists and playlists separate from the mainstream Top 40.

In 2003, as yet another milestone of its importance, Tapestry was one of 50 recordings selected by the Library of Congress and placed in the National Recording review.

In a recorded conversation between Carole King and Lou Adler inside A&M Studio B on October 18, 1972, in Hollywood, Ca., King shed some light on her songwriting aspect of Tapestry.

“The music is always again inspiration but I have more control of the musical inspiration. In other words, if I get a musical idea, if I just get a glimmer of a musical idea, I can make that go much more how I want it to go. If I get a lyrical inspiration, I really have to work hard at controlling it. I really can’t control it. And most of the good lyrics that I have written have just sort of come to me without any control.

“The only control that I excert is in editing which I’ve always done to Gerry’s lyrics and Toni’s lyrics. I’m a very good editor and that’s the craft. Once I got to the stage of recording, I have feelings of wondering about whether it going to make it or not for a time, but the big questions about, you know, whether it’s going to make it or will people like it, all the big insecurities really happen when I’m writing the song. Once the song is being written and once it’s finished and I play it for you, and a few people whose opinions I respect, I begin to get a feeling. Sometimes I already have the right feelings. Sometimes I don’t know. When I write my own lyrics, I’m conscious of trying to polish it off but all the inspiration is really inspiration, really comes from somewhere else.”

In their 1972 interview Adler conducted with Carole at studio B at A&M Records, she disclosed the album title origins.

“It is typical of the magic that seems to surround that album, a magic for which I feel no personal responsibility, but just sort of happened, that I had started a needlepoint tapestry, I don’t know, a few months before we did the album, and I happened to write a song called ‘Tapestry,’ not even connecting, you know, the two up in my mind. I was just thinking about some other kind of tapestry, the kind that hangs and is all woven, or something, and I wrote that song. And, you being the sharp fellow you are, (giggles), put the two together and came up with an excellent title, a whole concept for the album.”

In 2008 I interviewed Lou Adler at his office in Malibu, Ca.  

Q: You’ve always been a song man.

A:   Going back to my early days with Sam Cooke and Bumps Blackwell. The first thing that Bumps, Sam’s producer, a man from Seattle who had worked with Quincy Jones when Quincy was 16 or 17. Bumps took us to school. He made us go through stacks of demos, made us break them down. ‘What was good about the first verse?’ ‘The second verse?’ ‘The bridge, and how do you come out of the bridge?’ So, from the beginning part of my career in the music business I was a songman. That was very important to me. When I’m working with Carole on the songs from Tapestry, and she is playing me these songs, she is playing songs that are the best. From track to track, you don’t get a bad song. You might get one song that I would have had a problem with sequencing, but they’re solid songs even just with piano and voice.

Q: Tell me about your stint at Aldon Music in the very early 1960s that later in the decade became Screen Gems Music, who were the publishers of Carole’s songs on Tapestry?

A: Lenny Waronker brought Randy Newman to meet me and I gave Randy a stack of Carole King demos. I thought that was the best education that anybody that wanted to be a songwriter could have. I mean, at one point I said to Snuff Garrett, who was producing Bobby Vee, “I’ll let you hear this, but you’ve got to give me the demo back,” because they were keeping the demos.

“Well, the thing that she did in singing and playing -- and she also sang all the parts that eventually would show up on the followup records, the hits.  Once a producer got a hold of her record, she pretty much laid out the arrangement. Both instrumentally and the vocal parts that would end up on the record. Her demos when I first started working for Aldon Music, the way that we worked, Donnie Kirshner, myself and Al Nevins, and the staff would find out what particlar artist that had a hit and was looking for follow ups.

“That assignment was then given to all the writers to go to their cubicles and knock out some songs. They were there from the beginning.  And actually, wrote the song.  I mean, she -- History shows most of her hits, until she became a recording artist and wrote “You’ve Got a Friend” and “So Far Away,” were with Gerry Goffin. They didn’t just write records, like in ’58 and ’59, for Fabian and Avalon.  But they wrote songs first, and then wrote the record and showed how the song sould be interpreted.

Q: Some thoughts about Gerry Goffin who co-wrote a few tunes on “Tapestry.”

A: Gerry Goffin is one of the best lyricists in the last 50 years. He’s a storyteller, and his lyrics are emotional. “Natural Woman,” “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” both on “Tapestry.” These are perfect examples of situations, very romantic, almost a moral statement. Coming out of the 1950s, with the type of bubble gum music, and then in 1961, Gerry is writing about a girl who just might let a guy sleep with her and she wants to know, “is it just tonight or will you still love me tomorrow?” Goffin could write a female lyric. If he could write the words to “Natural Woman,” that’s a woman speaking. Gerry put those words into Carole’s mouth. He was a chemist before he was a full-time lyricist. He’s very intelligent and obviously emotional.

Q: What about Carole’s growth as a songwriter?

A: Watching her writing her own lyrics as the principal lyricist I saw her develop as a lyrtic writer, “You’ve Got a Friend.”  A famous Carole King song. She was not confident as you can imagine then in writing lyrics, having worked with Gerry, as I’ve said, arguably one of the best lyricists over the last 50 years, maybe. But she gained her confidence within this Tapestry album and I think she had been writing a little bit, but really once we started on Tapestry she felt confident enough to complete those songs. 

“We went by songs. The only thing we reached back for, which was calculated in a way, which of the old Goffin and King songs that was hit should we put on this album? And, that’s how we came up with “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.” I thought that song fit what the other songs were saying in “Tapestry.” A very personal lyric. 

“Tapestry was such a partnership between Carole, myself, Hank Cicalo, the engineer, and the musicians, so it’s hard to say anyone suggested because we did it all together. Because it was really that kind of record.  On Carole’s demos that leads to the sound on Tapestry, her piano out front, and the bass drums, maybe a guitar, but she put in all the parts. Within her piano you could hear a string part, or hear another background part, and she did the background parts. After The City album and Writer Carole began writing for herself.

Q: Talk to me about Carole King in 1970, before her “Writer” debut solo LP on your Ode Records label, and just before “Tapestry” began.

A: The climate of the late ‘60s had no women in the Top Ten charts, except Julie Andrews on ‘The Sound Of Music’ soundtrack. Before the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 I flew to New York and tried to sign Laura Nyro. I invited her to perform at the festival.   Carole was in a group the City, who I produced for Ode in 1968. The L.P. was called “Now That Everything’s Been Said.” The City’s album was supposed to be a group, even though it sounds a little like ‘Tapestry,’ not so much in the subtleties, but in the way that group plays off of each other. At the time Carole did not want to be a solo artist. She wanted to be in a group and she was more confortable in a group. She didn’t want to tour that much or do any interviews. And we started to get those kinds of songs that would then lead us to Tapestry.

“Toni Stern, a writer for Screen Gems, collaborated with Carole earlier on the Monkees’ Head soundtrack and The  City album, and Carole’s debut album Writer. I knew her a little bit. She was introduced to Carole by Bert Schneider of RayBert Productions, producers of the Monkees. I saw her when the songs were presented with Carole to me for Tapestry.

“Danny Kootch and Charlie Larkey were on The City’s Now That Everything’s Been Said  album, they are the core certainly of Tapestry. Larkey on both electric and acoustic standup bass and his relationship with Carole at the time, husband and babies to be.  And father of babies to be.  His bass was very important to the sound and feel of Tapestry.

“As music often does, it becomes the soundtrack of the particular time.  What I think happened in ’70 or late ’70, ’71, James Taylor and Joni Mitchell and Carole, is that the listening public and the record-buying public bought into the honesty and the vulnerability of the singer-songwriter, naked in the sense -- You know, what James was singing about, “Fire and Rain.”  Their emotions that they were laying out there allowed the people to be okay with theirs.  And I think the honesty of the records, there was a certain simplicity to the singer-songwriter’s record, because they either start with vocal-guitar or piano-voice.

Q: Reflect on Tapestry.

A: I really knew that it was special.  It brought out emotions that no other record at least at that time had. Tapestry was really special and hit a real chord with the public.”

Q: The pre-production period was fundamental to Tapestry. You cited the influence of jazz vocalist June Christy’s Something Cool LP with arranger Pete Rugolo.

A: It’s one of the first albums that I started noticing sequence and continuity of songs and thoughts, so that it wasn't a roller coaster emotional ride, it was a smooth ride. Musically, if there's one other thing, Peggy Lee with George Shearing, who connected some instrument to his piano playing. He doubled the vibes, he doubled the guitar, you know? You'll hear on Tapestry, if you go back and listen to it, I doubled a lot of Carole's parts with Danny Kortchmar's guitars.

So, for me as a producer, those were two real influences, but especially the June Christy album. Carole’s piano playing on the demos dictated the arrangements. What I was trying to do was to re-create them in the sense of staying simple so that you could visualize the musicians that were playing the instruments. And also tie Carole to the piano, so that you could visualize her sitting there, singing and playing the piano, so that it wasn't 'just the piano player,’ it was Carole. And that came from the demos, which would start with Carole playing and singing, as well as doing some of the string figures, always on piano.

During pre-production I had in my mind to use a lean, almost demo-type sound. Carole on piano playing a lot of figures with a basic rhythm section, Russ Kunkel and Joel O’Brien on drums, Charles Larkey, bass, Danny “Kootch” Kortchmar, guitar, Ralph Schuckett on the electric piano, along with David Campbell doing the string section.

“I also had Curtis Amy on sax and flutes, his wife Merry Clayton, and Julia Tillman. James Taylor added acoustic guitar to ‘So Far Away,’ ‘Home Again’ and ‘Way Over Yonder’ on the album. James is also on ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ and along with Joni Mitchell is one of the backing vocalists on ‘You’ve Got a Friend.’”

Q: Explain to me about selecting the songs for Tapestry.

A: In selecting the songs, we had 14 songs that we were considering. One of which was “Out In The Cold” that didn’t make the initial album. Which we later issued as a bonus track that’s on CD. Carole would play the songs, some that she had written, or was finishing, and some that she wrote during the album. Everything that we selected I obviously felt should be on the album and we didn’t have that many songs that we were leavng out.

The pre-production consisted of coming up to my office on the A&M Records lot.  We eventually recorded all of those tracks in the A&M Studios, B and C. After Carole would play all the songs, and at that point we think about musicians that would fit. We had this little core group of musicians. The difference on the tracks realy lies with the drummer. On things like “Home Again” and “So Far Away” was Russ Kunkel, and on the more uptempo ones was Joel O’Brien.

Q: Tell me about the initial playback of Tapestry.

A: I recall wallking out of the studio after a playback with Danny Kooch, and he said, “what do you think of this?” He misinterpreted I think when I replied, “it’s the musical equivilent of Love Story, which was a number one move at that time. And Kootch, felt, “that’s a little soft.” What I meant was that it was an emotional album that was going to be very big and bring out emotions in people that no other record at least until that time had.

Q: What about the post-production after the recording aspect was completed.

A: Carole never expressed this is really good or this is going to be really big. I think she was happy with what we were doing. During the Tapestry sessions she was very confident, very business-like and organized.

“She takes problems that occur in the sessions as good as anybody I ever worked with, fine, get it fixed. She had a real calmness about her., if there is a fire you don’t see it on the surface as far as the post production, after you do all the recording, mixing, I closed the doors to the mixing room, and I played Carole the mixes after they were done, if she had any suggestions we would then go in and fix the mix. But she never asked to be there during mixing and I don’t feel she felt left out.

“When I felt the mix was final to a point, then she would listen and might have suggestions or comments like, ‘That’s it,” “That’s fine” or “I think the vocal has to be up or you missed that part.”

Q: The sequencing on Tapestry was crucial.

A: When I started sequencing Tapestry, I remembered and thought the sequenceing on June Christy’s Something Cool was incredible, the transition from song to song just kept you in the album. It was something that I tried to accomplish with Tapestry.

“I took the tapes home and I went through a lot of changes. I finally fixed on the sequence and took a vacation to my house in Mexico that had a small cassette player and that’s when I came up with the final sequencing. But I went through a lot of changes.

“John Phillips of the Mamas & Papas influenced me a lot on sequencing and what the final chord on one song is to the first note on the next one so it’s not jarring music transitions.

“Sequencing meant a lot in those days, the journey, or the experience or the adventure of lisitening to a new album and sitting down by yourself puttng on that vinyl, The story that it told, the sequencing was very important. I was sequencing for the person who was listening at home, alone.

Q: How does Tapestry fit into Carole’s body of work?

A: Well, I think it is the epitomy the matching of the songwriting with her piano playing. And her vocalizing. The producion allows all of those things to be forefront. It’s not a ‘Spector’ sound as her own sound. We got a little away from the subsequent albums we did after that.

“The group of Tapestry songs have that many right songs on an album, songs that compliment each other. Songs that trasmit everything that is right about Tapestry. What would I do different? Everything was done right for whatever the reasons were. Once again, it’s Carole King as a songwriter.

Q: Tell me about the atmosphere at A&M Records when you produced Tapestry. You did the album on their lot. They distributed your Ode label.

A: A&M itself, you can’t imagine the heads of some labels coming to some sessions and then standing next to you and saying thing, but with Herb (Alpert), because we had been previous business partners and his musicianship, and my respect for him, as co-head of that label, I was totally confortable with that.

“You could talk to him on a music level.  I had my own promotion man within the A&M structure so that helped a lot. The people at A&M loved music. They were not there for any other reason. The fact that a musician who co-owned a label. As far as the first Tapestry playback and the advance buzz, you didn’t have to do much.

We sent out the mailing to radio stations and record reviewers. The first review we got back from The Long Beach Press Telegram was a bad review. Whoever wrote it talked about Carole’s voice being thin. But there was no other plan other than get it out there and let people hear it. The response on the lot itself, visualize it at the time was like a college campus.

“Everybody talked to each other about all the products during lunchtime, and the word on the A&M lot was fantastic, and the kind of responses that validated what we had done. ‘This album is so personal.’ ‘This album I can listen to over and over and it reminds me of things that I’m going through.’ That permeated throughout the years it has continued to sell.

“Each time from vinyl to CD to downloads. Somebody buys Tapestry again because they want to listen to Tapestry in the new mode. It just became personal to everyone who listened to it. There were enough songs in there for people to pick up this song and that song. “So Far away” is my favorite song. At the time of the initial release, we were still thinking AM radio as far as singles. FM radio still had an undergound feel to it.

“The choice of “It’s Too Late” as a single came from (A&M co-owner) Jerry Moss. The differnce between Tapestry and other albums I had been involved in was the word of mouth. On “It’s Too Late” Curtis Amy is on sax. He had played on the Doors’ “Touch Me.” But the distinctive flavor he added to “Tapestry” was his flute. 

“He hadn’t played flute in a very long time and he was nervous about it ‘cause he had just been playing sax. I said, ‘we’re gonna use flute on this.’ Curtis said, ‘Give me a couple of days to work on it.’Curtis and his wife Merry Clayton were both fantastic and were a very important part of Tapestry.

(Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015's Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016's Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017's 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love. Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 the duo wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble. 

Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. His Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock ‘n’ Roll TV Scenes) was published in January 2026 from BearManor Media.

Harvey spoke at the special hearings in 2006 initiated by the Library of Congress held in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation. In 2017, he appeared at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in its heralded Distinguished Speakers Series and also a panelist discussing the forty-fifth anniversary of The Last Waltz at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles in 2023).The post Carole King’s Tapestry Celebrates 55th Anniversary first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.